BROUSSARD Hoot

Most of Louisiana's BROUSSARDS trace their ancestory back to the two Acadian brothers, Joseph and Alexandre, the sons of Jean Francois Broussard who was born in France in 1654.

Jean arrived in Acadia in 1671. He married at Port Royal in 1681 Catherine Richard, daughter of Michel Richard and Madeline Blanchard.

Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil was born at Port Royal in 1702 and Alexandre was born in 1703.

Joseph and Alexandre founded Boundary Creek settlement in Novia Scotia in 1740.

After the British forced the Acadians into exile in 1755, Joseph acted as a leader for a small resistance group. Using guerilla warfare, this group held out until hunger and news of other French losses in Canada forced them to surrender to the British in 1759.

Held prisoner until 1764 when his name appears on a list of refugees sent to Saint-Domingue. He and his group went to the Attakapas area of Louisiana in 1765. He is edsignated on a cattle contract dated April 4, 1765, as "capitaine commandant des Acadiens des Attakapas".

Through the offices of a retired army captain, Antoine-Bernard Dautrive, who claimed large tracts of land, the French authorities sent the refugees to Teche country.

Joseph married Agnes Thibodeau on September 11, 1725. They had four sons:

Joseph died on October 20, 1765, in the Attakapas District, and Alexandre died the same year.

By the 1770's, their sons had firmly established the Broussard name in the Teche. However, the Broussard name did not stay only in the Teche area. Descendants of Louis Broussard and his wife, Marguerite Beniot, of the Opelousas Post can be found in Avoyelles.

Louis, born in about 1759, the son of Urbain Broussard and Marguerite, the daughter of Jean Baptiste Beniot and Marianne Trahan were married around 1773.

Louis and family can be placed in Avoyelles in 1795 through land sale records. He died at the Avoyelles Post sometime before October 27, 1800, the date of his succession. Records show they had ten children, all were born at the Opelousas Post.

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